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0 pointscweagans6y ago0 comments

B2 isn't really a solution for people that are looking for a robust computer backup service like Backblaze currently offers for Mac and Windows. I went down that road and ended up very frustrated.

I ended up buying a Synology NAS (which does offer the same computer backup features + revisioning and all that), and then syncing the backup out to B2. It's not an ideal solution by any means, and I would get rid of my NAS in a heartbeat if there were a real solution for Linux desktops.

It really sucks to have had to go through all of that setup (+ have another machine to maintain) when I just wanted to get things done and know my data was safe.

Would you consider working with the community to find a better solution? Maybe offer a closed source library (a la libspotify, but for Backblaze) for the storage bits + get the community pointed in the right direction for an open source frontend for Linux or something?

0 comments

calcifer6y ago

I imagine the problem isn't closed vs open source, but the fact that on Linux it would be trivial to mount a massive NAS (think dozens of TBs) in a way that's completely invisible to the Backblaze client and pay $6/month for unlimited backups. There were people on /r/datahoarder who stored petabytes on Amazon's "unlimited" backup before the whole product got canceled.

cweagansOP6y ago

I'm reasonably sure you could do the same on macOS.

therealx6y ago

The MacOS market is big enough to support that - they prob manually call out the outliers.

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clSTophEjUdRanu6y ago

You can do that on Windows too can't you?

elehack6y ago

Backblaze can back up arbitrarily large local drives, but does not allow you to set network drives as backup sources (for precisely this reason). It's fine with the local drive being shared - our desktop's big storage drive is exposed over the network - but it can detect and refuse mounts from other machines. I don't know what it does with an iSCSI drive, haven't tried.

I think it's harder to detect network mounts in a way that wouldn't have a bunch of false positives on Linux.

calcifer6y ago

I'm not familiar enough with Windows to answer that, but I imagine HTPCs are much more likely to use Linux and would make a $6/month backup a very attractive target.

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0 pointscweagans6y ago0 comments

B2 isn't really a solution for people that are looking for a robust computer backup service like Backblaze currently offers for Mac and Windows. I went down that road and ended up very frustrated.

It really sucks to have had to go through all of that setup (+ have another machine to maintain) when I just wanted to get things done and know my data was safe.

0 comments

calcifer6y ago

cweagansOP6y ago

I'm reasonably sure you could do the same on macOS.

therealx6y ago

The MacOS market is big enough to support that - they prob manually call out the outliers.

1 more reply

clSTophEjUdRanu6y ago

You can do that on Windows too can't you?

elehack6y ago

I think it's harder to detect network mounts in a way that wouldn't have a bunch of false positives on Linux.

calcifer6y ago

I'm not familiar enough with Windows to answer that, but I imagine HTPCs are much more likely to use Linux and would make a $6/month backup a very attractive target.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse